What a fun time this sounds like!
My wife and I have yet to go this extreme, though we intend to one day. Maybe we will even try to tackle our own little world tour, if the lottery pans out for us.. haha
We did get to tour the southeast, though, and if you end up shooting up I-75 through Tennessee I definitely recommend hitting up the Great Smoky Mountains and then hitting North Carolina up for the Tail of the Dragon.
Smoky Mountains, plainly put, breathtaking. If you hit up Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg in TN, you see a good amount in a condensed area, lots of attractions, lots of scenery, fishing, hiking, bungee jumping, amusement parks, mountain air. In 10 minutes it can go from a wide range of crazy vacation spot city life to quiet, portrait-worthy landscape. Must see at least once.
Tail of the Dragon is the best motorcycle and sports car road in the US, with 318 curves over its 11 miles, but its a little dangerous. Otherwise, real close by is Cherohala with about 60 miles of scenic mountain type highway.
Lodging is plentiful in both areas, but if you come up I-75 or I-40 to get to them, I-75 and I-40 both meet right around Lenoir City, TN, which is very affordable for lodging and is only about 30 minutes from Smoky Mountains. If stopping in Lenoir City, I recommend the Econo lodge there or similar, the higher priced in the area aren't worth what they charge. You can get by for around $50-60, as opposed to $120+ in Smoky Mountains or closer to either the Dragon or the Skyway. There's also a Loudon exit, but it's only accessible off the interstate from 75 between Knoxville and Chattanooga Tennessee, there's a way to get to the Smokie Mountains and then NC from there, too, but they didn't have vacancy when we stopped there at the Country In/Suite. It looked like it probably had some amenities and we looked them up later and their site had ~$80 and some change.
In the Smoky Mountains, there's a few places for cheap chow, Mandarin House is a giant Chinese buffet, Gatlinburg has some great polska kelbasa dog restaurants, there's an A&W Root Beer restaurant around the area somewhere we found.
Lenoir City had a KFC buffet and some other stuff there right on highway 321 (the road to take from Lenior city to Smoky Mtns)
There's a great steakhouse near the entrance to the Dragon from that end we tried, pretty decent, too.
One thing you might want to consider is gasbuddy.com or similar to figure out the lowest gas prices along the trip, it saved us quite a bit.
Other than that, there are some great resources out there for individual states, I highly suggest getting in contact with as many tourism boards as possible to find out the top spots.
Once you nail down at least 3 major sites/areas in each state you would be interested in, it will be pretty easy to map out and adjust.
Lemme know if we can help with anything else in the southeast area, we've seen quite a few beaches that are musts, also.
Happy travels, I hope to see what you make of the trip.
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